THE SIDEWALK SHOE-STORE.
What do all these people do? It would be easier to answer the question, What don’t they do? They do everything. If there is an article on earth—that is, a second-hand article,—that is not bought and sold in Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning, I have not seen it. You can buy anything you want there, provided you want it second-hand, from a knitting needle to a ship’s anchor. There is nothing in the street that is not second-hand, except the people. They all bear the stamp of originality, every one of them. They are born traders. If a pair of Petticoat Lane Jew twins in a cradle don’t trade teething rings, and attempt to swindle each other, the father and mother drop tears of sorrow over them, and as soon as they are old enough, take them out of the place and apprentice them to a trade. Without this manifestation they would not be considered good enough for Petticoat Lane. Very few have, however, been so apprenticed.
Here is a hideous old woman on the sidewalk with her stock in trade under her eye, and a sharp eye it is, arranged along the curb. What is it? A few dozen or more pairs of boots and shoes, in all stages of dilapidation, carefully polished, and made to look as respectable as possible, any pair of which (by the way, they are not always mates,) you shall buy, if you desire, at any price ranging from a penny to a shilling. No matter what the ancient dame gets for them, she has made a profit. She picked them up on the streets, save a few that she may have borrowed when the owner was not looking. What anybody wants of these remnants, these ghosts of foot wear, I can’t conceive. But she sells them. The trade is consummated easily after the chaffering is over with. The purchaser pays the woman, and sheds the worse ones he has on, and puts on his acquisition, and wends his way. Probably in an hour he would be glad to trade back, but it is too late.
Next to her stands a cart, which is a portable hardware store. There are hinges, nails, all second-hand, carpenter’s tools, axes, locks, keys, and all sorts of iron-mongery, and he sells, too. Somebody wants these goods, and he gets his price. As these things are collected as were the boots, the vender is happy at every pennyworth he sells.
THE CLOTHING DEALER.
Here is a clothing merchant with his stock laid conveniently on the sidewalk. It is a motley mass, and his method of disposing of it is precisely the same as that of the second-hand clothing dealer the world over. I don’t know as these dealers rise to the sublime height of the New York Chatham street Jew, who claimed that a villainous green coat was made for General Grant, but that he wouldn’t have it because the velvet on the collar was too fine for his taste, but they approach it. He has everything that one can conceive of. There are flunkeys’ uniforms, sailors’ jackets, worn-out dress coats that once figured in the best society, but they decayed, and went down and down through all the grades of society, till they finally landed in Petticoat Lane, where they will be sold for a shilling, and the purchaser will tear the tails off as useless encumbrances that give no warmth and are simply in the way, and comfortable jackets will be made of them.
